The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) has tested and will begin utilizing a remote engineer consultation for small residential home assisted living licensees with five or fewer residents.

MDH staff are working to complete the first two-year survey cycle for assisted living and to meet those timelines for years ahead. To do so, MDH has been examining productivity and implementing ways to work smarter to complete the survey workloads promptly. 

This model adds approximately 30-60 minutes to the nurse evaluator’s survey time but enables more flexibility with engineering staff to support multiple surveys so MDH’s Health Regulation Division (HRD) can conduct more surveys each week.  There will also be fewer MDH staff physically in the small setting at the time of the survey, with less disruption for providers and residents.

If an engineer is needed to physically go to a location to evaluate a situation identified by the nurse evaluator, the engineer will do so. 

Design standards are higher with licensees at a six or more resident capacity that might need additional engineering expertise, so this supports the decision to implement only a remote engineer consultation in facilities with five or fewer residents.

HRD has created and tested a survey document for this process, which will soon be posted to the MDH assisted living website and is available for review here.